CMS Adds $200 Million In Payments to Open Payments Database
On Friday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) added approximately 68,000 payment records—valued at more than $200 million—to the Open Payments dataset.
“With this new data, Open Payments now reports information on $3.7 billion in payments and transfers of value made to up to 546,000 individual physicians and up to 1,360 teaching hospitals in the last five months of the 2013 calendar year,” states CMS.
CMS notes that an updated data set will be routine going forward.
“Every year, CMS will update the Open Payments data at least once after its initial publication,” according to the announcement. ...
Source: Policy and Medicine - December 22, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
Continuing Medical Education Payments To Physicians Will Be Exposed To Sunshine
After a long and complicated struggle it now appears highly likely that industry will be required to disclose payments to physicians for continuing medical education (CME). This decision from CMS, which I am told by reliable sources is final, follows a long period in which CMS appeared to waver in its approach to incorporating CME into the Sunshine Act. … Click here to read the full post on Forbes. (Source: CardioBrief)
Source: CardioBrief - December 17, 2014 Category: Cardiology Authors: Larry Husten Tags: Policy & Ethics Continuing medical education Sunshine Act Source Type: blogs
Physician Payments Sunshine Act: CMS Releases Continuing Medical Education FAQs, Interpretations Appear Inconsistent With Final Regulations and CMS’s Own Statements In the Final Rule
Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued three FAQs and an example grid to supplement their recent revision to the Physician Payments Sunshine Act continuing medical education (CME) exemption. Instead of clarifying the new Rule, however, this latest round of sub-regulatory guidance—which was not subject to notice or comment—actually confuses and in some cases over-expands upon the plain language of the Final Rule.
As a background, if an applicable manufacturer “provides funding to support a continuing education event but does not require, instruct, direct, or otherwise cause the continui...
Source: Policy and Medicine - December 16, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
Physician Payments Sunshine Act: List of Open Payments Resources
This article also lists resources that analyzed the payment data. We followed up this initial publication review with another round-up on October 30, a month after the initial data release.
Breakdown of Research Payments, Including Top Manufacturers
Research payments from manufacturers to teaching hospitals and physicians in the first database were around $1.5 billion. While about 90 percent of this research data was de-identified, so as to cover the recipient of these payments, the information provides a useful look into the collaborations between companies and physicians and teaching hospitals.
Continuin...
Source: Policy and Medicine - December 8, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
National Quality Forum Begins Annual Review of Quality Measures, Comments Open December 23 on the 202 Proposed Measures
On Monday, the Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) began its annual review of performance measures that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is considering for use in 20 federal health programs. The 202 measures considered by the group have been made public (view the PDF), and will be available for review and comment beginning December 23, 2014.
Established by the National Quality Forum (NQF) in 2011, MAP is a forum of approximately 150 healthcare leaders and experts, representing nearly 90 private-sector organizations. MAP comprises consumers, purchasers, labor, health plans, cl...
Source: Policy and Medicine - December 5, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
2014 IACE Survey Offers Benchmarking Insights Into Commercial Support of Independent Medical Education
The Industry Alliance for Continuing Education's (IACE) Benchmark Work Group (BWG) have shared their 2014 study of the life science industry's best practices related to commercial support of independent medical education (IME). The BWG has surveyed industry for several years now, and their current study incorporates trends in a number of important categories, including: IME budgets, departmental involvement in grant review committees, interactions with providers, patient education, and monitoring the activities companies support. This year, the survey also highlights the Sunshine Act (Open Payments) and its potential effec...
Source: Policy and Medicine - December 4, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
AHA Physician Leadership Forum
If you spend most of your time working in the inpatient setting, you're probably already familiar with the American Hospital Association's Physician Leadership Forum (PLF).The PLF strives to make available resources to prepare today’s physician for tomorrow’s challenges. Building the next generation of care necessitates close collaboration between clinicians and administrators across the care continuum. With rapid changes in care delivery, high performing leadership teams are needed to combine high quality and high efficiency to deliver high value care. Over the past few years, the AHA PLF has been collaborating with v...
Source: Non-Clinical Physician Jobs, Careers, and Opportunities - December 2, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Joseph Kim, MD, MPH Source Type: blogs
ACO Update: An Opportunity for CME?, Challenges Ahead
Conclusion
Dr. Pelzman ends his article by noting that when money enters the picture of care and becomes too significant of a presence, it has the potential to take physicians away from the most important goal: caring for patients.
If ACOs are to benefit patients, he argues they must ensure for evidence-based care to prevent unnecessary emergency room visits, prevent patients from doctor-shopping, and keep them within systems where caregivers can better take care of patients. Dr. Pelzman acknowledges there is a business side to healthcare—ultimately someone is responsible for the bottom line—but when that becomes too m...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 26, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
Physician Payments Sunshine Act: Rep. Burgess Addresses New Bill to Exempt Medical Texts and CME at Committee Meeting
At a recent meeting in Washington, D.C., Rep. Michael Burgess, M.D. (R-TX) spoke to the importance of H.R. 5539, bipartisan legislation he co-sponsored that would exempt peer-reviewed medical journal reprints and independent continuing medical education from Sunshine Act reporting. Burgess serves as Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health in the Energy and Commerce Committee, and practiced medicine for nearly 30 years prior serving in the House.
The session, led by Sylvia Trujillo, Legislative Counsel at the American Medical Association, also included valuable input from Christina Taylor, M.D. from the Iowa ...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 25, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
Maintenance of Certification: AMA Adopts New MOC Principles
During last week’s 2014 AMA Interim Meeting in Dallas, AMA House of Delegates voted to update the AMA’s policy on maintenance of certification (MOC). The adopted policy outlines principles that emphasize the need for an evidence-based process that is evaluated regularly to ensure physician needs are being met and activities are relevant to clinical practice.
Download AMA MOC Resolution
The MOC principles will now include:
MOC should be based on evidence and designed to identify performance gaps and unmet needs, providing direction and guidance for improvement in physician performance and delivery of care.
The MOC pro...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 21, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
“Continuing Medical Education” meets “Quality Improvement Education”
The Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions is supporting an initiative to promote quality improvement programs through continuing education activities.
ACEhp members are invited to submit comments on the “Quality Improvement Education” Roadmap for the committees’ consideration until November 24, 2014. ACEhp will host a webinar this Friday, November 14, to discuss the Roadmap, provide feedback, and hear comments from colleagues.
We have featured an article written by Destry Sulkes, MD, MBA, Board President of the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (ACEhp)
“Contin...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 11, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
ACCME CME Literature Review Demonstrates the Effectiveness of CME; Finds No Bias in Commercially Supported CME
Yesterday, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) announced the publication of two reports addressing important issues in CME: the effectiveness of CME, and the relationship between commercial support and bias in CME activities. The author of the study, Ronald M. Cervero, PhD, Professor and Associate Vice President for Instruction at the University of Georgia, systematically reviewed decades worth of CME studies and found that CME has been shown unequivocally to be an effective learning tool. Furthermore, on the issue of whether commercial support leads to bias, Dr. Cervero notes that no...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 5, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
CMS: Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative
Last month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched a new innovative model to support clinicians in achieving large-scale health care transformation. It's called the "Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative."The Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative will provide up to $840 million over the next four years to support 150,000 clinicians in sharing, adapting and further developing comprehensive quality improvement strategies, which are expected to lead to greater improvements in patient health and reduction in health care costs. This is one of the largest federal investments uniquely designed to suppor...
Source: Medicine and Technology by Dr. Joseph Kim - November 4, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Physician Payments Sunshine Act: CMS Removes CME Language from the Final Rule and Effectively Incorporates the Accredited CME Exemption Into Its Other Definitions
On Halloween evening, October 31st, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued their final physician payment fee schedule for 2015, which included their changes to the Final Rule implementing the Physician Payments Sunshine Act.
The agency’s brief announcement following the changes stated that the revisions included “Deletion of the Continuing Education Exclusion in its entirety.” While this is technically true, CMS effectively expanded the CME exemption by stating that they would not consider any CME-related payments to be reportable so long as the commercial supporter “does ...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 3, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
Physician Payments Sunshine Act: Medical Societies Express Strong Support for H.R. 5539 To Exclude Education Materials From Reporting
Last month we wrote about a bipartisan effort in Congress to exempt medical textbooks and journals, as well as indirect payments that pharmaceutical and device manufacturers offer to CME providers, from Sunshine Act reporting requirements. Click here for the text of H.R. 5539. Now, dozens of physician organizations representing both national specialty societies and state medical societies have expressed their support of the bill. "H.R. is needed to ensure patients benefit from the most up-to-date and relevant medical knowledge," the letter states.
View the medical societies' letter to Representative...
Source: Policy and Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
